Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Other People's $ (Taxpayers)

So if Socialized Amherst Recreation Empire Director Linda Chalfant was sooooo “confident the town will be able to rent the Mill River pavilion for 88 weekend and holiday days at a rate of $150 and for 116 weekdays for $75” for a grand total of $21,900 then why didn’t she guarantee it with her taxpayer funded $100-K annual salary, like any private sector entrepreneur?

Lucky thing for her she didn't, because this past year the formerly free pavilion only generated $5,735 in total revenue; Chalfant also predicted annual revenues of $14,160 for the Groff Park Pavilion and actual revenues were a paltry $3,462.50 Her total projected revenues (with “add ons”) for both pavilions came to $44,880 and the actual intake this past year was under $10,000…a tad off the mark.

She also s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d things when she told the illustrious Amherst Select Board that one of her $39,000 salaried employees is offset by $44,800 in new pavilion revenues when that $39,000 employee also has an additional $12,000 to $13,000 in health care and other associated employee benefit costs thus bringing the total revenue required to over $50,000 per year.

Either way $9,197 is not even close--unless you subscribe to the adage "close enough for government work."

Groff Park's $140,000 "comfort station" with an expensive "concession" component that has never been used.

Actually I do that on purpose just to see if some Nitwit will actually cite it...thus showing they could not find anything else wrong with the post.

Back when I was writing a professional column for the Bulletin, I would usually put something in it that was totally over-the-top knowing my editor would nix it but then leave alone some of the more borderline, pushing-the-envelope digs.

The formerly free Groff Park pavilion generated $3,462.50. What's wrong with that? It's not like they built that pavilion this year, or the one at Mill River either. You should be happy they are generating revenue when they used to not generate a penny. You just like to complain.

The comfort station at Groff Park replaces the prior one which had to be torn down. The park needed restrooms. Get over it.

Anon at 6:30am is right on the fact that the park used to generate no revenue, but now it generates 3k. After that their argument runs fallow. The town spent a lot of money to renovate the park and the director of the agency that oversees the parks justified the cost of the renovation, her salary, and staff wages could be offset by the revenues the park would generate. The question now is; was she totally uninformned when making this argument or did she purposely mislead the taxpayers of Amherst?

"...the director of the agency that oversees the parks justified the cost of the renovation, her salary, and staff wages could be offset by the revenues the park would generate."

In the same way raises for school administrators were going to be paid for by the money teachers, school (non admin) and town employees were to "give" back (with a ~little~ bit of pressure) in wage (contract) concessions...

Whose idea was that? Straight from the ice cold mind of Kathy Mazur I wonder?

I was in Groff park recently and the pavilion and every picnic table were occupied. There was football practice on the playing fields and the playground was full. The park gets heavy usage and needs and deserves maintenance to serve the needs of our residents.

All I can tell you is the Golf Course lost $1 million in operations (not counting interest of course) before the town gave up and bankrupted the Enterprise Fund 3 or 4 years ago thus hiding a lot of the current overhead costs (employee benefits, insurance, borrowing DPW help, etc.)

I'm not throwing in anything. I'm just including all the expenses the park incurs. If I excluded the watering of the 9th hole at Cherry Hill you wouldn’t think that was legitimate, so we should count everything the park has to maintain. As for benefits, etc. the people who maintain the park all have salaries and benefits a portion of which should be included in the expenses in you want to include those costs for Cherry Hill.

The $2.2 million is irrelevant as it is the cost of the acquisition of Cherry Hill not an operating expense. It was the cost of acquiring another town recreational facility, in essence additional park land.

The question was about this year's operating expenses for the two facilities, not what happened in the past. You are not giving me the cost of constructing Groff Park’s football fields, baseball diamonds, or buying picnic tables and grills, etc. so the discussion should not be slanted by your bias against the acquisition of a facility that is now in the past. It’s over. The only thing that should be compared is what does it cost the town to maintain these two recreational facilities and what if any revenue offsets it.

Yeah, it's always easier to make the cuts when you are a blogger rather than an actual elected official that has the responsibility to protect the schools, police, fire, public works, etc. that all need a sufficent level of funding to do function.

It's titled "Other People's $ (Taxpayers)" but it has nothing to do with taxes, as the pavilion rentals are fees not taxes.

The comfort station did cost $140,000 but that sound pretty reasonable for a nice restroom facility that will probaby be around for $50+ years.

LSSE does manage the pavilion rental and their revenue projections don't seem all that accurate but that doesn't have anything to do with the cost of the comfort station. It's not like they rent the comfort station.

"Well the comfort station would have been a lot less if they did not add the kitchen/concession component that LSSE said would generate lots of money"

Larry, if they had left that ut it would have been only marginally cheaper. They still would have need 4 walls. The difference is you would have been complaining that if they only had added a concession stand they could have generated revenue that they wouldn't have froma restroom only building.

You're a town official, why don't you generate ideas on how to get the concession stand rented for next summer. Let's put it out to bid.